Unfortunately, the bill as passed did not contain no-reason absentee voting — which was included earlier. And such additional money for voting equipment as was included in the final bill (largely to block voters from trying to vote the change down for a third time) will be controlled by the partisan Secretary of State, not the (also partisan but at least local) county clerks. Oh, yes, and Michigan state law (MCL 168.786) still only gives voters **two minutes** in the voting booth before “election inspectors” can kick them out.

Nine states still have it: Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma,Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. All nine have Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature, except in Kentucky the Democrats have the House.

Perhaps DemoRep is thinking that, if voters have to rely on names in each race rather than using the one-place-votes-all[-partisan-races] straight-ticket device, they will go for the candidates with the best name recognition . . . who are likely to be incumbents. I’m not convinced of that logic myself, but it might well be good enough to pass the “laugh test” for an argument in court for rational-basis scrutiny.

For clueless folks – wiping out the straight party ticket option makes it more difficult (1) for minor parties to stay on the ballots in the next election and (2) to defeat incumbents in lower party hack offices — esp. State and local gerrymander legislators.

The USA is now full of EVIL and CORRUPT ANTI-Democracy gerrymander oligarchs in ALL legislative bodies.

Too many clueless juveniles of this list who are especially brain dead about the robot party hacks in SCOTUS, constitutional law and pre-school gerrymander math.

1/2 or less votes x 1/2 pack/crack gerrymander districts = 1/4 or less indirectly CONTROL regimes.

The straight party option was invented so that illiterate voters, who could not recognize the names of all their chosen candidates, could learn to recognize just one name: the name of their party, and thus cast votes in all races that had candidates of that party. In Pennsylvania, which still has the straight party option, it is a completely unnecessary option since the state allows a person who needs help seeing or reading the ballot to have assistance in the voting booth.

How is it not better to have voters only voting for candidates that they mean to vote for?